The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

PSA: Watch “The Molly Maguires” on Netflix

Maybe somebody on the Netflix website has film-curatorial
ambitions and is pushing for people to see and reassess Martin Ritt’s “The Molly Maguires,” a largely forgotten film that is, rather surprisingly, available on the Netflix on demand service.If so, good for
him or her.“The Molly Maguires”
definitely deserves another look.(if
you don’t know who the Molly Maguires were, get thee to a Wikipedia entry.OK, if you’re too lazy to click on the
link, the Molly Maguires were militant Irish mineworkers who used violence and
sabotage to struggle against the brutal union-busting tactics of the mineowners
in Pennsylvania coal country in the 1870s, as well as sticking it to scabs,
Germans, and Welshmen.Today we’d call
them terrorists.)

The movie was an expensive flop when it came out in
1970.It was derided as the last gasp of
old-fashioned Hollywood studio filmmakers desperately trying to come to terms
with the revolutionary transformation of audience, artistry, and attitude that
brought us Bonnie & Clyde, Easy Rider, etc. etc. etc.

Four decades letter, stripped of the expectations and
prejudices of its time, The Molly Maguires is a powerful piece of work.

Consider it the anti-Doctor Zhivago, a thinking-person’s
epic, set in the turmoil of America in the midst of the industrial revolution
instead of Russia during the Soviet revolution.But there are problems that contributed to its negative critical
reception and dismal box office.

Instead of lots of pretty white snow, you’ve got tons of
dirty black coal.Instead of a love
affair involving the luminous Julie Christie, you’ve got a fraught and
unfulfilled bromance between Richard Harris (a detective infiltrating the Mollies)
and Sean Connery (the leader of the local Molly cell), their charisma smothered
under lumpy clothes, soup-strainer moustaches, and Amos-and-Andy levels of facial
coaldust.

And instead of a gauzy depiction of bourgeois romance with
its hopes and dreams and fears, you get an unblinking look at the
ruthless, iron-hard determination of the most gifted and ambitious members of
the working class to escape the miseries of their birth and circumstances.

The film was produced and directed by Martin Ritt.Presumably Ritt was able to get The Molly
Maguires green-lit because he was riding a string of winners featuring Paul
Newman, including Hud, the film that defined Newman’s career, and Hombre,
another hard edged depiction of American history leavened with plenty of
action, gunplay, and dramatic catharsis.

Anyway, Ritt was given $11 million—a gigantic budget for the
time--and he put all the money on screen.A replica of a Pennsylvania coal mine, reputed the largest indoor set
ever built, was constructed on a Hollywood soundstage.On location in Eckley, Pennsylvania, Ritt recreated
an 1870s mining town accurately enough that it still serves as the heart of a
Pennsylvania state historical museum. Ritt and his cinematographer, James
Wong Howe, also shot around the existing coal operations in the area (one of
the more affecting scenes shows two proletarian lovers trekking to their picnic
spot through a blasted moonscape of tailings ponds and dead trees), and in the 19th
century prison and courthouse in Pennsylvania in which the Mollies had been
held and tried.

True to his epic/art-house ambitions, Ritt tried to get the
picture shot in black and white but was understandably turned down by the suits
at Paramount.Instead, Ritt managed to
express his artistic side with the understated ochres of Howe’s photography, a
wordless 15 minute prologue, and the remarkable decision to not let Sean
Connery speak until 45 minutes into the movie.

The Molly Maguires was a labor of love for Ritt and his
screenwriter, Walter Bernstein.Ritt has
described it as his favorite of his own films.Ritt and Bernstein had been blacklisted as a result of the Hollywood red
scare in the 1950s and at the heart of the movie they placed the conundrum of
Richard Harris, the tough immigrant striver infiltrating the Molly Maguires, as
he is torn between his desire to nail the Mollies and climb the company ladder
into the middle class and his class-based sympathy for the conspirators and
their desperate recourse to violence.

Ritt, known as an actor’s director, makes all the right
choices in eliciting credible and moving performances from his cast despite the
difficult material.

There is a wonderful moment when Harris secretly reports to
the company police about Molly-related mischief.The captain peremptorily orders Harris to
give up the names, and one can imagine Ritt, carrying in his heart his memory
of the HUAC experience, instructing Harris to hold his reply for an extra beat
and…

…well, no spoilers here.But just to warn you, there’s no uplift and you won’t come out of the
theater (or, rather, your Netflix-watching den) humming the theme song.

No wonder the movie didn’t do great.Ritt claims he couldn’t get work for years as
a result of The Molly Maguires (he made his comeback with the equally labor-themed
but considerably sunnier Norma Rae, starring Sally Field).The powers that be supposedly decided that
Sean Connery was box-office poison if he wasn’t playing James Bond, and Richard
Harris, instead of catapulting to stardom, became a perennial supporting player
(low point: exhorting Bo Derek to endure as her naked torso is slathered for
sacrifice by the native folk in Tarzan; high point: going out as Dumbledore in
the first two Harry Potter movies).

The Molly Maguires is without compromise, a remorseless,
two-hour look at what people have to do when they’re at the bottom of the
ladder and the only choices they are offered are bad ones.The sacrifices that the Mollies and the
miners make are absolute, without the feel good “triumph of the spirit”
sentiments of Hollywood’s usual depictions of labor struggles that threaten but
don’t quite upset the existing order.Joe Hill, in other words, isn’t alive as you or me.He’s just fucking dead.